On February 19, 2015, Pacific Symphony presented its annual performance of a semi-staged opera. This year’s presentation at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, featured Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Director Dean Anthony used the front of the stage and a few solid set pieces by Scenic Designer Matt Scarpino to depict the opera’s various scenes.

Although the English National Opera has been decidedly sparing with its Wagner for quite some time now, its recent track record, leaving aside a disastrous Ring, has perhaps been better than that at Covent Garden.

In a production first seen in Houston several years ago, and now revised by its director John Caird, Puccini’s Tosca has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago with two casts, partially different, scheduled into March of the present season.

English National Opera’s revival of Peter Konwitschny’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata had many elements in common with the
production’s original outing in 2013 (The production was a co-production with Opera Graz, where it had debuted in 2011).

I wonder whether we need a new way of thinking — and talking — about operatic ‘revivals’. Perhaps the term is more meaningful when it comes to works that have been dead and buried for years, before being rediscovered by subsequent generations.

Hopefully this brilliant new production of Iphigénie en Tauride from the Grand Théâtre de Genève will find its way to the new world now that Gluck’s masterpiece has been introduced to American audiences.

Arizona Opera presented Eugene Onegin during and 1999-2000 season
and again on February 1 of this year as part of the 2014-2015 season. In this
country Onegin is not a crowd pleaser like La Bohème or
Carmen, but its story is believable and its music melodic and
memorable. Just hum the beginning of the “Polonaise” and your friends will
know the music, if not where it comes from.

Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles at the Wigmore Hall in Ernst Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen. Matthias Goerne has called Hanns Eisler’s Hollywooder Liederbuch the Winterreise of the 20th century. Boesch and Vignoles showed how Krenek’s Reisebuch is a journey of discovery into identity at an era of extreme social change. It is a parable, indeed, of modern times.

On Tuesday January 27, 2015, San Diego Opera presented Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme. It is the opera with which the company opened in 1965 and a work that the company has faithfully performed every five years since then.

Last year we tracked Orfeo on his desperate search for his lost Euridice, through the labyrinths and studio spaces of Central St Martin’s; this year we were plunged into Macbeth’s tragic pursuit of power in the bare blackness of the CSM’s Platform Theatre.

Although the New York Times
regarded the straight-forward plot as purely conventional we experienced the adaptation of Sir
Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake as somewhat unusual opera seria largely because the ending was happy, the king did not get the girl, and the only death occurred off-stage. Briefly, the
plot consists of three men who each love Elena (the title character): Rodrigo, who has been
promised her hand in marriage by her father; Uberto, the king of Scotland in disguise (a surprise
to us all at the very end); and Malcolm, a handsome young man with few credentials to
recommend him to her father other than the deep love he and Elena share.

La Donna has grown in popularity lately due to the diligence of musicologist Philip Gossett, who
worked with Marilyn Horne in reviving Semiramide. La Donna also has a pants role—Elena’s
young lover Malcolm is cast as a mezzo-soprano—and like Semiramide, it is the
soprano/mezzo-soprano love duets that offer the most musically sensual moments.

Laura Vlasak Nolen as Malcolm stirred what was otherwise a somewhat sleepy matinee audience
on Saturday, March 24, rousing them to cheers with her first-act aria, an electric out-pouring of
love for the absent Elena. Nolen’s duets with Alexandrina Pendatchanska as Elena were also
cause for much applause.

Pendatchanska’s voice and training were well-suited to the bel canto role of Elena, but she was at
times hard to hear, possibly because the orchestra was overpowering her extremely florid and
delicate sound. The two high tenors, characteristic of Rossini but a rare find nowadays, were
also impressive. Robert MacPherson as Rodrigo was a very commanding presence, if somewhat
inconsistent; we particularly were impressed with his energy in his first aria. The role of Uberto
was ably filled by tenor Barry Banks who has a close performing relationship with
Pendatchanska. Elena’s controlling father Douglas was performed by Daniel Mobbs.

The orchestra also performed admirably. The musicians handled the challenges of Rossini well,
keeping the scales clean and the touch light. The woodwinds are to be especially commended for
their solos in the overture. Too, offstage horns heralding the onset of war created some of the
greatest spatial effects of the opera.

The set and costumes were designed by David Zinn, who characteristically employed lots of
brick in his set design. The overall feeling was somewhat claustrophobic, especially in the scene
inside Elena’s home where the wings moved inward and the towering walls reached the fly. Still,
you must admire the man who tries to portray a lake with a wall of bricks. The uncomfortable
effect was heightened by the presence of numerous stiff-looking chairs that were toted about the
stage by stern women dressed in black. One other moment was particularly unfortunate in large
part because of the set and staging: although the first duet of the opera was well-sung and
dramatically acted, the mood was ruined by laughter elicited from the audience when Elena and
her suitor Uberto exited the stage in a boat that was ostensibly carrying them across the lake.

Overall, City Opera’s production of La Donna had an emotional impact that was greater then the
sum of its parts. While the audience seemed somewhat disinterested, we found the singers strong
and Rossini’s music beautiful. A unique work in the canon, we are truly appreciative of the effort
given on all fronts to put on this gem.